


With Reminiscent Undertones

by StarsInMyDamnEyes



Series: Witcher!Jaskier Oneshots [3]
Category: The Witcher (TV), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: :D, Anyways, FUCK what do I tag this, Gen, Geralt is a dumb, Geralt is a sad boi, Identity Reveal, Jaskier is a dumb, No Post-Mountain Geralt Vilification, Non-Human Jaskier | Dandelion, Platonic Relationships, Secret Identity, Surprising Lack of Fight Scenes, Witcher Jaskier | Dandelion, Wolf Witcher Jaskier, and a bad cook, but that’s just par for the course at this point, ciri has all the brain cells, discussions, geralt tries his very best to be a good dad, i will be most surprised, idiots the both of them, if i ever write a fic that isn’t, is it a secret identity if the person who has the secret identity didn’t know it was secret, lots of swearing, no beta we die like calanthe; painfully and slightly underwhelmingly, the author has disappointed themselves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-10
Updated: 2020-05-10
Packaged: 2021-03-02 18:07:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,630
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24111040
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StarsInMyDamnEyes/pseuds/StarsInMyDamnEyes
Summary: It wasn’t Jaskier’s fault, not really, that everything had gone to shit.It was that piece of shit, good-for-nothing, useless little waste of a glamour that was the problem.Alright, yes, maybe he had been wearing it for... Oh, going on a quarter of a century, and it had worked like a charm throughout that time, but the fact remained that a good-for-nothing fucking bandit had managed to snap the chain of the little pendant he wore in a scuffle by his lonely little campfire. Abandit.It would have been marginally less embarrassing to lose his glamour to a newly-hatched duckling.
Relationships: Cirilla Fiona Elen Riannon & Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia, Cirilla Fiona Elen Riannon & Jaskier | Dandelion, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia & Jaskier | Dandelion
Series: Witcher!Jaskier Oneshots [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1735543
Comments: 58
Kudos: 834





	With Reminiscent Undertones

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Bamf_babe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bamf_babe/gifts).



> Based on a prompt by @bamf-jaskier
> 
> God I love this prompt
> 
> I really want to do a part 2 but i have so many fics to work on already :(
> 
> Enjoy!!

It wasn’t Jaskier’s fault, not really, that everything had gone to shit.

It was that piece of shit, good-for-nothing, useless little waste of a glamour that was the problem.

Alright, yes, maybe he had been wearing it for... Oh, going on a quarter of a century, and it had worked like a charm throughout that time, but the fact remained that a good-for-nothing fucking bandit had managed to snap the chain of the little pendant he wore in a scuffle by his lonely little campfire. A _bandit_.

It would have been marginally less embarrassing to lose his glamour to a newly-hatched duckling.

Ordinarily, he would have gone to find another mage to remake the glamour, but he was pitifully short on coin... And there was the whole matter of impending war with Nilfgaard to consider. No sorcerer worth their salt would have been idling at a time like this, reducing the pool of potential glamour-providers greatly, and Jaskier didn’t particularly want to cavort with shady, backwater magicians who were just as likely to scam or curse him as they were to provide him with anything actually useful for his coin.

Either way, the glamour was gone, and Jaskier was acutely aware of how utterly and completely unsubtly his true nature was displayed across his face - scars and all.

He’d not exactly been through the same process as Geralt, but oh, how they’d loved to experiment at Kaer Morhen! Jaskier’s trials themselves had been... intensified, altered to change him just a little bit more than was strictly necessary. His hair hadn’t turned white as Geralt’s had, which he was thankful for - though it had faded from a dark, almost black brown to an off-white or tawny colour in various streaks - and his physical features were, for the most part, not so unusual, save for the smattering of iridescence is his pale, yellow eyes when they caught the light, an oddity even among witchers.

No, the trials had been mainly focused on altering his senses, rather than his physique, which was both a blessing and a curse - he wasn’t so obviously different among witchers, even if the migraines he suffered from the constant bombardment of outside information hadn’t really lessened over the years.

The scars were by far the biggest giveaway of his true nature, aside from the weaponry and armour he’d donned so as not to end up fist-fighting all of his monsters - not many people got close enough to stare him in the eye, after all. Before he’d been too seasoned as a witcher, he had, about half the time, managed to pass as an ordinary if enigmatic human half of the time... but the scars, the scars were such an obvious declaration of his line of work - and monsters really did leave the most distinctively shaped little mementos on his skin, damn them - that such a thing had stopped being possible long ago.

He’d tried to explain them away, once or twice, and it had never ended well.

This was brilliant, it was perfect. Twenty, thirty years, his glamour had held, only to fail him the moment it became impossible to fucking replace the damn thing. In hindsight, he really should have carried around a spare.

Still, what was done was done, so he’d returned to his little safe-house in Oxenfurt - mainly for storage purposes rather than anything else, to hide his, ah, his _little secret_ well enough from prying eyes - and swapped out Filavandrel’s lute for all his witcher gear.

It really was a shame, he’d liked all the _frippery_ , as Geralt had insisted on calling it - but one would simply not be able to take a witcher in a doublet seriously. Not to mention, the moment he raised a sword against any kind of creature, his usual garb, the things he’d grown accustomed to as a bard, would have immediately been ruined. The injustice of it all.

Still, he didn’t hate his more witchery style of dress - he wore black, because he looked very good in it, and, while still practical, it was elegant enough that he caught flak from it from other witchers as they teased him relentlessly for his choice of clothing. Too, he could carry a larger array weapons - never let it be said that Jaskier the Bard wasn’t _also_ armed to the teeth, because of course he was - but he’d been stuck with subtle weaponry, daggers and the like hidden around him in various places. As a witcher, though, he could carry larger weapons - longswords on his back, short swords on his waist, he liked some variety - without seeming out of place.

So he’d looped his wolf medallion around his neck, shoved his lute and silks into the cabinet he’d emptied, and decided to go traipsing around the continent. Maybe he’d run into Geralt at some point... Telling him off for what an utter cock he’d been on that mountain was a conversation that was far past due, after all.

Besides, they’d known each other at Kaer Morhen. Perhaps the great oaf would even be happy to see him as Julian again.

Though, it hadn’t really turned out as such. Jaskier had been wandering the forests of Kaedwen aimlessly for months, now, taking the odd contract here and there for coin, and sleeping fitfully in the forest, no bedroll or pack - he had no horse, to carry them, after all.

Perhaps this seemed like a bad idea; that it would be too easy to overwhelm him, attack him, that his pace would be too slow - but Jaskier could do very well for himself without one, thank you very much. He didn’t particularly long for the hassle of looking after a horse - it was a _horse_ , the damn things had seemingly been bred to have their first response to danger be the swift, instinctual urge to break all four legs, for crying out loud, they were nightmares to keep alive, he didn’t know how Geralt did it - and besides, Jaskier was, contrary to popular assumption, competent. He could dispatch a few bandits.

Too, he enjoyed fighting, just a little bit. The idea that witchers should never be anything but helpful, given that their reputation was shit enough as it was, had been drilled into him at Kaer Morhen alongside all the other witchers, but then again... What Vesemir didn’t know couldn’t hurt him. And, well, if he dispatched _all_ of his attackers, every time, with no witnesses, there wouldn’t very well be anyone left to tell him, would there?

It had been easy enough to fall into a routine on the road - Jaskier fought, hunted, slept, walked, and cast his fires with Igni just to prove that he was still a lazy bastard after training himself out of the habit during his stint as a bard. It was an unobtrusive enough life, kept him well away from the war and all the troubles that came with it.

He was so fucking bored of it that most of him was constantly beset by the urge to scream his lungs out into the woods.

This night, too, was a night like every other night, and Jaskier spent it staring into the fire and humming nonsense melodies under his breath. He wanted to compose - gods, he wanted to compose - but the absence of both his lute and any particularly interesting new subject matter kept him from doing so.

He missed the whole bard thing. He missed being loud, flashy, and underestimated, never mind how absolutely jarring the volume required for performances was to his sensitive ears.

 _Delicate_ , Geralt had teasingly called them one winter at Kaer Morhen, back when he was a returning witcher but Jaskier was still but a boy. He supposed Vesemir had stuck them together in the hopes that Geralt could serve as a sort of mentor figure to temper the insolent rascal of a _second_ extra-Trials test subject that the School of the Wolf had been saddled with.

That hadn’t happened. He’d gotten quite friendly with him, as a matter of fact - he wondered how much the old fencing instructor had felt that his plan had backfired against him when it became clear that Geralt was much more interested in listening to Jaskier’s - or rather, Julian’s, back then - choice words about their various teachers.

 _“For a boy as quiet as he is, he never ceases to run his mouth.”_ He remembered Vesemir’s grumbling tone clearly. He would have assured the old man most completely, had he not been hidden and eavesdropping at the time, that the only reason he didn’t chatter _loudly_ was that he had absolutely no desire to blow his own eardrums out. He could dampen outside sounds with soft scraps of fabric in his ears to some degree; his own voice was a different story.

Thankfully, he’d gotten used to his _nightmare senses_ over the years - which, annoyingly, patently refused to dull to the normal levels of a witcher. It always stunned him to realise that those imbeciles at Kaer Morhen hadn’t thought of such an obvious side effect of over-enhancing one’s senses. Fucking idiots, the lot of them.

Idly, he wondered if that was why Geralt had never put two and two together and figured that the annoying bastard of a boy witcher Vesemir had saddled him with at the keep and the annoying bastard of a bard that kept following him around were, in fact, the same individual. Either way, the cat was well and truly out of the bag now.

Or rather, it _would_ be, if Geralt actually bothered to _show up_. He’d stuck to Kaedwen for a reason - he knew Geralt would go for Kaer Morhen at some point, and figured that that was his best bet at crossing paths with him.

Now, if only that would actually _happen_.

Footsteps - a horse and a man - reached his ears, and he identified them far before he had any right to actually manage it, really. His enhanced senses had certain drawbacks to them, mainly in the form of the _fucking migraines_ that still plagued him to this day whenever he did anything marginally noisy, but also given that the sheer amount of information he could register at any given moment was so vast, he’d found it difficult to actually isolate and identify individual sounds or scents.

Apparently, he’d gotten better at it over the years - he suspected he had his time as a musician to thank for that - because he knew those gaits very well. Geralt and Roach.

 _Finally_.

Jaskier all but tripped over himself in his haste to make his way over to them, slipping between trees and following the sound - and scents, there were three scents, the child surprise, of course - and burst gracefully from the bushes, almost leaping straight into Geralt’s steel sword.

“Whoa! Whoa!” Jaskier shouted. “I yield, Geralt, I yield! Now please do not run me through before we can have our touching reunion!”

“Julian,” Geralt grunted, warmth bleeding into his voice a little, a tad quieter than he usually spoke. “You got loud.”

“I’m glad you finally noticed.”

Geralt hummed in response before turning to the girl atop Roach. “Julian, this is my child surprise, Cirilla. Fiona in public. Ciri, this is Julian. A friend of mine from Kaer Morhen.”

Jaskier clutched his chest. “I’m your friend? You admit it? Why, Geralt, that’s possibly the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.”

Earning a snort from the white-haired witcher, Jaskier turned back to Ciri, bowing in a dramatic fashion. “It is an honour to meet you, Princess.”

“How did you-”

“As if I _wouldn’t_ know that Geralt’s child surprise is the crown princess of Cintra,” Jaskier smirked, directing his voice more to Geralt that Ciri. “I suppose he’s told you that I’ve never had a single thought in my life, and that my head is full of empty air, then.”

“He’s never mentioned you, actually.”

At Jaskier’s glare, Geralt at least had the decency to look apologetic. “I thought you were dead.”

“You thought I was- I swear, Geralt, I know you think I’m incompetent, but _really_?”

“When did you get so loud?”

“Aha! You’re deflecting!” Jaskier turned and whispered to Ciri. “That’s what he does when he’s backed into a corner. He just changes the subject. Try and change it back, at that point - it’s his way of letting you know you’re winning.”

“Shut up, Julian,” Geralt growled, and Ciri laughed.

“So, where are the pair of you headed?”

“Kaer Morhen. Need to train Ciri.”

“Oh, what a coincidence!” Jaskier gasped, placing a hand on his chest. “It seems that we are headed the exact same direction! Mind if I tag along, Geralt, my dearest friend?”

“We’d be honoured to have you,” Ciri cut in, and Jaskier grinned.

“Geralt! She has manners! You could learn a thing or two from her.”

“Hm,” Geralt grunted.

Ciri smirked at Jaskier. “Definitely could learn a thing or two.”

“On that note, it is rather late, you know. Don’t the pair of you want to make camp?”

“We could stay at yours.”

“My campsite, Geralt? It’s a bunch of dying embers far too deep in the trees for anyone’s tastes.”

“But your stuff.”

Jaskier raised an eyebrow, and gestured down at himself, weapons all neatly on his person, potions, bandages, and other supplies tucked neatly into little pouches on his belt. “I travel light.”

“How the fuck have you not smashed them all in a fight?”

“Easy. I don’t get hit.”

Ciri giggled at that.

Grumbling under his breath about idiot children, Geralt dutifully led Roach to a suitable clearing for the night, and began to set up a camp, raising an eyebrow at Jaskier’s evident lack of a bedroll, at which the man in question shrugged.

Geralt began to build a fire, and Jaskier shot an Igni at the kindling from a distance, just to be a bit of a prick, because he evidently wasn’t getting an apology for the mountaintop, so it seemed only fair.

At the very least it was evidently amusing to Ciri.

Evidently, Geralt had taken to cooking actual meals for the sake of his Child Surprise, and so he set about trying to cook a stew - had he started to carry vegetables and the like around for Ciri? Jaskier was jealous.

Still, he somehow doubted that Geralt had gotten any good at cooking in the time they’d been apart.

“Geralt, are you trying to poison the princess?” Jaskier huffed, stopping Geralt’s hands before he could dump a truly lethal amount of onion in the simmering water he’d stuck above the campfire. “I understand you mean well, but you’ll end up doing more harm than good if you end up trying to feed her that.”

“Alright, you do it, then,” the man huffed, moving away, and letting Jaskier take charge of the stew. His voice, Jaskier noticed, was still lowered - either out of habit or genuine consideration, Jaskier didn’t know, but he found that it warmed his heart regardless. It was such a little thing, and yet... And yet, it was a sign that Geralt still cared about him, even after the mountain.

Jaskier grinned to himself as he busied himself turning Geralt’s annoyingly high-quality ingredients into a somewhat palatable stew.

Out of the pair of them, he’d always been the one to busy himself with the more mundane tasks, though it had seemed only natural during his time as a bard. What kind of troubadour knew how to brew a witcher potion or correctly tend to a sword, after all? Still, it felt comfortingly familiar to be crouched over the fire, tending to their evening meal.

“Who is Julian?” Ciri whispered to Geralt, voice almost inaudible. Jaskier huffed. She was no doubt accounting for the enhanced senses of a witcher as she spoke, which, unfortunately, would do her no good in this specific case. “Only you never mentioned him, but... You trust him. A lot.”

“You don’t need to whisper,” Geralt replied, a non-answer. “He can hear you no matter what.”

“But I thought you said witchers-”

“It’s not a witcher thing, it’s a Julian thing. He can hear a mouse sneeze a mile away.”

“Oh. How come?”

Jaskier grinned to himself. “If you want to know my secrets, dear Ciri, you can always just ask.”

“Oh.”

“She asked _me_ ,” Geralt interjected, almost petulant, and Jaskier had to laugh.

“Alright, alright! Go on, tell her about how wonderful I am.”

The White Wolf, damn him, merely raised an eyebrow at that.

“Geralt!”

Ciri, Jaskier saw out of the corner of his eye, was pulling a most exasperated face.

“Julian is a close friend of mine,” Geralt rumbled, and Jaskier only picked up on the hesitance in his voice because he knew exactly what to look for. “We met at Kaer Morhen.”

“Vesemir stuck him with me because we’d both been through experimental trials. I suspect he hoped Geralt would be a good influence on me, but alas, it was I who was a bad influence on him.”

“You’re exaggerating.”

“Oh, sure, Geralt, you just woke up one day and decided to be a little shit after a few decades of having about as much personality as cardboard.”

Jaskier stirred the stew, revelling in the fact that Ciri seemed to perk up at the smell of it. He was by no means a master of cooking, but compared to Geralt’s misguided attempts to throw together anything slightly more complex than a rabbit cooked simply over a fire, he had absolutely no doubt that anything he threw together was going to be a gourmet meal, of the sort served in a noble court, by comparison.

This fact had not escaped Geralt, either, if the almost-jealous glare he was levelling at Jaskier was any indication.

Catching Ciri’s eye, Jaskier winked. “There’s a reason I never let Geralt cook when we travel together, you know. Luckily, with my esteemed company, I shall be able to save you from his various poisonous attempts at a meal, and let him keep whatever remains of his dignity.”

Ciri smiled sweetly. “He’s been trying to cook for me for months. I’d say he has no dignity left to speak of.”

This startled a laugh out of the relapsed witcher. “I like you. Geralt, your Child Surprise is delightful.”

Geralt huffed something under his breath, something that Jaskier could - to nobody’s surprise - make out very clearly.

“Hey! I may be a menace, yes, but I am most certainly not a _child_.”

“You act like one.”

“Enough about that, then,” Jaskier huffed. “Lest my pride be damaged more irreparably, you brute. What have you been up to in the nebulous time since we last saw each other? Besides claiming your most wonderful Child Surprise, of course.”

Geralt’s face became stony, and he paused for a moment - _hesitating_ \- before Ciri cut in and answered for him. “He travelled with his best friend, a while, he told me.”

“Oh?” Jaskier tried not to let his bitter jealousy show on his face - somewhat unsuccessfully, judging by the looks he earned from both Geralt and Ciri.

Hastily, he turned his attention back to the stew, stirring it even though it was hardly necessary. If this meant that the damn oaf had suddenly gotten very buddy-buddy with Yennefer after the mountain - despite the argument he’d heard them have in painful clarity - he would not be held responsible for his actions.

Fucking _Geralt_. It was truly a talent of his, to fuck Jaskier over every single fucking time they fucking met. Apparently quite unintentionally, given how amiable he was suddenly being. Jaskier supposed he was supposed to take that as an apology for the mountain.

Why had he gotten so attached to a man with such a limited capacity for verbal communication, again? _I thought you were dead_. No _Jaskier, it’s nice to see you again, sorry for the mountain_ , no _Jaskier, you were Julian all this time?_ No, Geralt had just managed to quietly insult him - really, if he thought that such little time alone would kill him, he had clearly not been paying attention to the man at all over the past twenty years - and then they’d moved on.

What utter bullshit.

“Julian. Don’t you want to hear about him?” Geralt’s voice broke through his musings, sounding almost worried. Jaskier supposed that not asking for details was a suspiciously out-of-character move for the bard, but really, Geralt could have picked up on-

Wait.

_Him?_

“Actually, I’d love to hear about this mystery man,” Jaskier blurted, because Yennefer was most decidedly not a _him_ , and his curiosity had begun to outweigh his bitterness.

Geralt hummed. “His name is Jaskier.”

 _What_.

Jaskier schooled his face into an expression of interest. “Oh?”

“He’s a bard. Wrote some songs. _Toss a Coin_ , that was the first. Travelled with him for twenty years, on-and-off.”

This must have been some kind of fever dream - though Jaskier was certain he’d never had a fever in his life, the closest he’d ever come were the Trials. Was Geralt seriously telling _Jaskier_ about _Jaskier_?

Or maybe. Maybe, just maybe, he hadn’t _recognised_ him.

The very idea was ludicrous. There wasn’t such a difference between Jaskier and Julian, was there?

Although, come to think of it... Geralt had never recognised him as Julian under the glamour, either.

Oh, fucking _shit_. Of course he’d thought Julian was dead, then, it had been twenty-five, maybe thirty years since they’d last met as witchers. The lack of apology, then, was also hopefully just a side-effect of this lack of recognition - though with Geralt, one could never really know.

Unless...

“Anything more informative that you could tell me?”

Geralt grunted. “He was... Nice. He always stuck around. I thought he always would... Until.”

“Geralt,” Jaskier said softly, because he was just a little bit cruel, “Geralt, what did you do?”

“I was angry. I took it out on him. He left.”

Jaskier furrowed his brow. “What was he like?”

“He was kind. Soft. But also violent. I never really saw as much, but I’d bet my last coin that he was trained with some kind of weapon. Never shut up - so a lot like you, Julian - and always singing, composing. I never said as much, but he was my friend. But I couldn’t find him again, after that.”

Ciri piped up, then, cutting in again. “He was looking for him, he asked after him in every town we visited. No one had seen him, it was like he’d dropped of the face of the continent.”

When Geralt spoke next, there was clear bitterness in his voice. “He’s dead. He’s a famous bard, if someone had seen him, they’d have said by now.”

And all of a sudden, it was Jaskier who felt cruel. Gods, had Geralt _mourned_ him?

“You think he’s dead,” he said slowly, “and that the last thing you ever said to him was, what? To fuck off?”

Geralt grunted, and there was - fuck, there was _grief_ in that noise - and yeah, Jaskier felt like a massive idiot. Of _course_ that was what Geralt would think if Jaskier the Bard were to drop off the face of the continent.

Jaskier hadn’t even considered it.

“It’s alright,” the bard said, eventually. “You don’t have to talk about him.”

Geralt didn’t reply.

“The stew’s ready,” Ciri pointed out. “If you leave it any longer, all the water will simmer off.”

“Right you are, princess.”

Jaskier removed the pot from above the fire, and Ciri took two bowls from Roach’s saddle bags. Geralt had, evidently, rather gone to town on supplies with this whole _caring for a child_ thing. Shooting him an apologetic look, Ciri placed the two bowls down.

“We don’t have a third.”

The bard laughed. “Suits me fine. I’ve already eaten, and I prefer bland foods anyways.”

“Really?”

Jaskier waved a hand. “Enhanced senses. I can’t believe not one of those imbeciles considered all the possible drawbacks. Or they did, and just didn’t care. Either way, less is more sometimes, and in this case, that’s... Not the case. The words got away from me there, dear Ciri, but I’m sure you understand the gist of it.”

The child regarded him with a critical eye, before deeming his response satisfactory. “Is it the onion you’re avoiding?”

“Absolutely, it’s the fucking onion.”

The stew seemed to go over well with Ciri. She ate it gladly, though if that was because it was actually good, or merely because she enjoyed the reprieve from Geralt’s nightmare stews - Jaskier had seen how he made them before, and in his book, they qualified more as soupy onion than onion soup - was debatable.

Regardless, at least one person was enjoying his cooking. Geralt - because of course he was - was brooding over it.

Jaskier really should have just told him there and then, but he hadn’t the faintest idea how to phrase it.

In the end, it was Ciri who put him out of his misery.

“There’s something you’re not saying, Julian,” she said, eyeing him.

“That is true. At any given time, there are an infinite number of things I’m not saying.”

Ciri rolled her eyes. “You’re not saying something, and I’m fairly certain it’s about- about Geralt’s friend. You went all stiff when Geralt mentioned him.”

Melitele’s _tits_. Why did Geralt have to go and get an _observant_ , an _intelligent_ child surprise?

The man in question had immediately locked his eyes on the bard, sharp and querying.

“Ah. Well. You see-”

“Did you know him? What’s his name?” Ciri’s eyes lit up, and Jaskier deflated.

“Jaskier, it's Jaskier, I know who you mean. But I’m fairly certain any old sod could tell you that name. Notoriety, and all that. Plus, Geralt already called him by name.”

“Oh." Ciri's face fell momentarily, but she quickly perked up again. "How do you know him? Have you met?”

“You know, I really wanted to do this on my own terms,” Jaskier grumbled. “I didn’t know he wouldn’t- I thought I should at least think about what to tell him... And you, of course...”

Ciri’s green eyes gleamed with excitement and interest, while Geralt had gone as stiff as a board.

Turning his eyes on the man, Jaskier took a deep breath and began. “So, a little while after the mountain, I was wandering the countryside, and-”

“You’re the same person,” Geralt whispered, eyes wide. “You’re Jaskier.”

Jaskier huffed. “And now, he figures. Yeah, Jaskier and I are the same person. Surprise?”

“You’re Jaskier. You’re alive.”

Ciri looked far too delighted.

“Yeah,” the bard said. “I honestly thought you’d recognise me.”

Geralt shifted. “There were similarities, but...”

“What? Didn’t think the boy who kept his ears plugged all the time at Kaer Morhen would suddenly take up performing?”

“Amongst other things,” the White Wolf of Rivia admitted. “You never told me you were Julian, as Jaskier.”

Ciri giggled. “He really is bad with people, isn’t he?”

Jaskier spread his arms. “Terribly so.”

Geralt squinted at him. “Where’s your lute?”

“A safe-house in Redania, it’s where I kept my armour. I didn’t suppose it would be practical to carry- Oh, hello.”

He felt himself being squished, wrapped in Geralt’s strong embrace - since when was the man a _hugger_? Either way, he let himself melt into it, wrapping his own arms around Geralt in return.

He was warm, and soft, and smelt like campfires and Roach and onion.

“You bastard,” he growled. “I thought you were dead. Twice.”

Jaskier laughed, and if it was a tad nervous... Well. It was only a tad. “I’m here now.”

“You are.”

In hindsight, Jaskier realised, as two witchers and their Child Surprise made their way to Kaer Morhen for the winter, maybe things hadn’t quite gone to shit, after all.

**Author's Note:**

> Idiots, the both of them.
> 
> I’m @stars-in-my-damn-eyes on tumblr if this is relevant information for anyone :)


End file.
